I have made a new mage who is still very early, maybe 55ish, and its the first time I am trying to make a hybrid health/ward build.
I know there is a formula, but can you more experienced players just give a rough estimate to how much retention to needed to maintain 500, 1000, etc etc?
This question is for a character not using Exsang or any other item that drains hp for ward.
In simpler terms, if my amy has an implicit of grants 20 ward per second, how much retention do I need to hit those thresholds I mentioned earlier? Right now I am guesstimating I have 220% from the tree and int, and my mage has a giant ward meter but sits at around 235.
I dont know if the mechanic needs to become easier to understand or I am just an idiot. Maybe both.
You ward decays by 40% / (1 + Ward retention) * 0.5 per second.
So if you have 300% ward retion, you get 40/ (1 + 3) * 0.5
40/4 * 0.5
40/2
=20% of ward lost per second.
Meaning if you have say 50 ward per second, 50/0.2 = 250 should be your stable ward, because at 250 is when the degen equals the gain, at 250 you lose 50 ward a second to ward decay.
Closer your ward becomes to its stable peak, the lower your gain per second.
So a more extreme case, you gain 1k ward a second say you have last steps and exsang and 3k health, then your stable ward with 300% ward retention should be 5k.
As for an easy to digest “general” values? ward does not work that way, im pretty sure even on paper math isnt exactly how its gonna pan out in game because of server ticks etc.
just know that retention isnt the the only useful stat to have, the more ward you generate the better it becomes. low amounts of generation dont become “usable” even if you get like 600% ward retention, stack ward gen first, and get as much retention as you can without wasting other more important stats.
And your on your own for stuff like ward on hit, or on cast like twisted heart. Because then you get all kinds of annoying math where you are looking at use rate and floating hp values etc.
I appreciate you. Yea, thats why I tried to keep it simple by saying if in theory I just have a source giving me 20/s (so theoretical infinite ward gen), what kind of numbers am I looking at to hit higher peak equilibrium numbers.
I have taken the node of ward per 10 mana, ward gain on 40 mana use, massive amounts of ward gain with fire shield, nodes for fire/lighting cycling etc etc. When I pop them all my ward can get up to 2k, but it slowly but surely hits that 2xx equilibrium.
It is quite complex compared to ES in PoE, I appreciate it and at the same time am frustrated because I dont know when to call it quits on pumping up int for other affixes that are useful. This is my “seeing the PoE skill tree” moment in LE.
Thank you for that explanation, that was great info.
